


Brown Bottles

by laliquey



Series: Silver Beads, Brown Bottles [2]
Category: Breaking Bad, True Detective
Genre: Alaska, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 10:31:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2225742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laliquey/pseuds/laliquey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A continuation of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1459360">Silver Beads</a>, a fic where Jesse Pinkman & Rust Cohle meet on an Alaskan fishing boat while trying to outrun their assorted problems. For the <a href="http://truedetectivebb.livejournal.com/">TDMini-Bang</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brown Bottles

**Author's Note:**

> It might be helpful to read the previous fic – it's a quick read (less than 2k), but basically these two meet during salmon season and strike up a friendship. Jesse admires Rust's fuck-the-world outlook since the world hasn't been particularly kind to him, and Rust has an accurate read on Jesse's damage and suspicions about his real identity though he's kept it to himself so far.
> 
> Maaajor thanks to [badwips](http://archiveofourown.org/users/badwips/profile), for cheerleading AND [this astounding artwork](http://badsketches.livejournal.com/43282.html)!
> 
> Warning for a little bit of het sex and a brief instance of suicidal ideation.

The boat hums into harbor and they lean on the rail and watch Kenai get closer. The hold's empty, the bunks have been stripped, and the boat glides smooth like it's grateful for the break, too.

There are universes of things they'd been cut off from for three months: laundry soap, unlimited running water, and people besides each other. “Thing I probably missed most was TV,” Jesse says. “You?”

Rust doesn't even have think about it. “Beer.”

It sounds inane but he's missed it inordinately. Space being an issue boat-wise, he went with the spatial economy of 190 Everclear and took thimble-sized hits when necessary, but he can't wait to chug something again. He's always thought of beer as a friend, maybe because he can't drink enough of it for things to really nosedive. It takes something at least 80 proof for that.

When the boat sighs against the rubber dock bumper the crew gets ready to part ways, their goodbyes peppered with punches and profanity that mask varying degrees of hatred and affection.

“Seeya, dickhead.”

“God, I hope not. Tell your mom I said hey.”

“Fuck you. And thanks for the grub, Jess.”

“'Welcome, bitch.”

“Cohle, you are one strange motherfucker and I hope I never see you again.”

“Likewise, asshole," he says, and hangs back with Jesse so they can step off onto the silvered old wood and start the walk to shore together.

Right away it feels wrong. It's been eight weeks of liquid physics pulling them back and forth, every upright moment a subtle continuum of core adjustments and moon-pull that's missed when it's gone.

“Ah, shit.” They aren't off the boat for twenty steps when Jesse drop his duffel and barks puke off the side of the dock. Rust snatches the dropped duffel and keeps walking, partly out of kindness but mostly to balance out the weight of his own bag. It might be the power of proximity but he doesn't feel so hot, either. His inner ear thinks they're still moving.

“Dude.” Jesse catches up, spitting over his shoulder. “You got any Antivert?”

“Nope.”

“Let's sit a minute.” He hiccups, issues a craggy belch off to the side, and they sit on the dock's edge and pretend their guts aren't rolling with phantom motion. “So what's next for you?”

“The usual,” Rust says. “Hibernate till next year.”

“Remind me where?”

“Kodiak.” His things are stored in a mothballed row boardinghouse room in a mostly dead copper mining town up in the mountains. It's not bad: there's a store and a bar and people leave him alone.

“I hear it's nice out there.”

“Yeah. It's quiet.” So quiet the solution to the Lange case should've come to him by now and he itches to reunite with his files. Last summer, getting back on land was like racing to a hot date; he'd been so sure that the breakthrough would come after the time apart, but he fell down a whiskey-mud wormhole when it didn't.

“You should stay here at least for the weekend,” Jesse says. “There's a spare room I stay in while I'm here and it's big enough for both of us.”

Rust feels the bas-relief outlines of the calluses on his palm. This would ordinarily be the juncture where he buys his favorite crewmate one last drink at the nearest bar and disappears until next year. Instead he says, “I guess I could do that.”

Jesse seems to understand the rare victory of it and talks too much, too fast when they feel a bit more normal and start walking into town. “You wanna make more money than you know what to do with, come back in January for cod season. Like we could get on the same crew and shit.”

“Maybe.”

“This weekend you can help me cook up an eisbock and we'll get fucked up on it all winter long.”

Rust feels like Marty for a second. “Ice-what?”

“Eisbock, man, you know what that is? You half-freeze a dopplebock and pick the ice off. All the good stuff stays behind and it's like cognac, oh my God, you have no idea. And you need that kind of thing for winter. Cold as fuck, dark twenty hours a day...cod season's brutal, too. A fuckin' bloodbath.”

At the end of their half mile walk is a battered old house that's clearly a rental and always has been, and the inside smells like too many boys and not enough clean. “It's kind of a revolving door of people,” Jesse says, sidestepping a landslide of flattened cardboard in the kitchen, and he introduces the roommates, some of whom are present and some who aren't. They all have one-syllable names. Chad. Bryce. Mike and Dan. They speak that way, too, everything's dude or fuck or yo.

Jesse's tiny room has a bed and a fetid old futon pad crammed in a corner on the floor. “It's gross, I know,” he says, throwing his stuff down on the bed. “But it's not that bad once you get settled in. Come downstairs and I'll show you my stuff.”

The basement's cleaner than the upstairs and houses a rusted old avocado green stove that predates Jesse, shelves of brewing equipment, and a row of empty carboys. He unlocks a closet and pulls a lightbulb string to reveal shelves lined with neatly arranged bottles. “It's been conditioning for three months so it should be good and ready.” He takes a bottle from the shelf marked Scotch Ale with masking tape and uncaps it with an irresistible _pfffft_. “I'll put some in the fridge but I always like the first taste a little warm to see how it turned out.”

The heavy scent of malt wafts through the closet and Jesse pours some in a glass and examines it, smells it like a wine connoisseur and holds it up to the light. When he tastes it, he smiles.

Rust gets the rest of the bottle and loves it. It's rich and red with a light smoke and a heady threat that enough of it could seriously knock him on his ass. “Damn,” he says, and even after he's swallowed it down the taste unfolds in his mouth even more. “You really know what you're doing.”

Jesse's modest. “It's okay, I guess.”

After the ale's deemed a success, he opens a bottle of rye stout that tastes like bread, chocolate, and coffee tied together with a leather string. Rust could get used to this.

“Kinda wanna park my ass in this closet forever,” he says.

“You can stay as long as you want. Like, that futon in my room's super comfortable and shit.”

*

They start two loads of wash at laundromat, then park on barstools at the Ptarmigan Bar next door to down shots and eat peanuts while they wait. “Our clothes are gonna be so clean they're gonna feel wrong,” Jesse says, licking peanut shell salt off his fingertips. Creeping warmth fills Rust's stomach and he remembers his long-ago life of ironed shirts and haircuts, and now his clothes are so goddamn dirty they literally weigh more. He isn't totally married to Alaskan autonomy and freedom, though, because unlimited liquor and midnight sun are always followed by unlimited liquor and suffocating dark.

Later that night, he finds that the futon in Jesse's room isn't bad with a clean sheet draped over it. Compared to the boat bunks it's like a fucking marshmallow, and when he settles in he slips into dreams of being back on the boat. It rocks just enough to feel good and the moon-pull taps a harmonic deep inside of him, like he's meant to be on water.

He's enjoying the quiet when Dora Lange climbs up out of the hatch, with ivory linen spilling off her curves and a wreath of rosemary twigs woven into her hair. She's like a goddess version of herself he's neither seen nor considered: healthy and happy, and they lean elbows on the rail together and look out the peach-purple sky. “Feels like we're still moving, don't it?” she says.

“We are.”

“Nope. Just feels like it. You're not moving at all.”

She steps in front of him and rests the curve of her back on the rail, with a fresh face far prettier than he remembers. He can almost feel the warm rush of blood animating her, she's so alive.

“You gotta help me figure out what happened to you.”

“Can't.”

Some of her weight transfers to his frame when she wraps her arms around his neck and the sharp menthol of rosemary tickles his nose. “Dora.” He tries to wriggle out of her hold but can't. “Dora, you gotta help me. I need to make things right.”

The boat movement pushes her breasts up against him in a rhythmic pulse and her fingers weave through the back of his hair. An old heat pools in his gut and it's still there when he wakes up in the morning, hard and aching for someplace to plant it.

It angers him because he doesn't need that kind of stuff anymore, and he can't even consider a guilty tug over it because Jesse comes in, buoyant and loud. “It's not even eight and I already got a haul, yo.”

“Huh?”

“My product's, like, a thing or whatever. I traded a six pack for a big-ass brick of elk burger and this.” He points to the coarse-knit hat on his head, dark blue striped with gray. “God, I hope the spruce tip jelly guy's still around. That shit's the shit. Anyway, sorry to bug you, just need my shoes 'cause we're digging a fire pit outside. Sleep all you want.”

Rust doesn't want to dream any more, so he gets up and takes a shower. Even though the embossed vinyl wallcovering's peeled up in one corner and he can smell the mold behind it, it's one of the more luxurious showers of his life. He hadn't planned on shaving, but getting clean feels so good he keeps going and trims down his face, foams up, and pulls all the thick stubble off, one swath at a time.

Jesse thinks it's hilarious when he sees it. “Whoa, look at you, handsome. What the hell?”

Rust gives him the finger and quietly watches his life sideways for the rest of the day. His homebrew is like currency and people come by to taste it, trade for it. People adore him and he never stops being embarrassed by the attention. Eventually it gets to be too much and he retreats to the basement and inventories all the grains capped up in glass jars. After that he sits and smokes quietly, reviewing the things that haunt him, probably.

Late in the afternoon, after elk burgers and a huge cookie sheet of crispy tots, the girl comes over. There's a wide openness about her, like she'd soak up anything Jesse would say or give. Rust's in a neutral starch coma from the tots but notices how the chemistry of the room shifts with her in it.

“Hey, Jesse.”

“Hi. Amy, this is my friend Rust.”

“Hi.”

“Hey. Anyway, I've been saving these for you.” She holds out a big paper sack that clinks with bottles. “They're pretty clean, and no screwtops this time.”

He's careful not to look at her. “Thanks.” He takes the sack and roots around in the fridge for a few bottles to give her in return.

“You making anything new?”

“Yeah, probably,” he says, and puts up such a wall she eventually feels awkward enough to leave.

“Somebody's got a not-so-secret admirer,” Rust notes dryly.

It's like a weight on Jesse's back. “I know. I'm totally not interested, though, kind of like we talked about. I'm done with women. Like forever. I hope you don't think I'm, like, your flunky or whatever, but I'm glad I met you. So much of what you say makes sense.”

He knows that. Jesse's been his sidekick most of the summer, agreeing with him, denying all programming, parroting the darkness, and coming up with his own observations that are just as bleak. If Rust had to venture a guess, he'd guess that he's been horribly hurt, but that he's also caused inadvertent harm to people he loves. He knows a little about that because he's done it, too.

*

Amy brings more bottles when they're cooking mash in the basement in a cloud of yeasty yellowness, when they're too busy to talk. “Thanks,” Jesse says. “Just leave 'em at the bottom of the stairs and take what you want outta the fridge.”

She doesn't care what's in the fridge. “I was thinking about drawing you a label,” she says. “Like a beer label.”

“Yeah, um, whatever. If you want to.”

The lack of enthusiasm is hint enough and she meets eyes with Rust, ashamed that there's a witness for this. But she puts on a pleasant air, compliments the black bird on his forearm, and leaves.

“Okay!” Jesse says with renewed enthusiasm. “Let's get back to work.”

There's a lot to homebrew, apparently. Terminal gravity measurements and aeration and airlocks...Rust has no idea what's going on and just does what he's told. Jesse's narration is like an unfamiliar language but the little crescent moon shadow that always has its sharp hook in his back is nowhere to be found. It's like his refuge, where he's confident and unafraid.

Their work produces two carboy bottles that will ferment until early winter. “It's gonna be good,” Jesse predicts with a satisfied look on his face. “Like, the best.” He gets two bottles of stout out of the closet and hands one to Rust. It's best at cellar temperature, they've decided, and they crack them and clink bottle necks. “Thanks for the help.”

“Thanks for letting me,” Rust says, just as he's kidnapped and swallowed by a great wave of brown. He wallows around in the endorphin surge a bit, but then recognizes the bubble he's in, latched onto Jesse's life of trades and friends, and as much as every sense stretches for more, it can't continue. He has to shed this shit so he can think properly. Dora was right. He's not moving at all.

“I kinda should get back home. I'm worried about my stuff,” he says. It's only a handful of irrelevant personal effects and the Lange files, but the woman who runs the boardinghouse is pushing ninety; sometimes he gets a sharp trill of panic that she died in her little rose-wallpapered apartment and his file boxes are moldering in a landfill, but he can't call to check because she's a conspiracy theorist who believes all telephones are tapped.

“Dude, your stuff's fine. Stay a couple more days so you can meet my cod guy and get on his crew. Anyway, follow me upstairs and we can talk about it. I got shit to do.”

They don't end up talking about it, but Rust drinks and watches Jesse pull the pin-bones out of a huge king salmon with pliers. The plan is to grill it for the neighborhood, providing the roommates can come up with a hunk of chain link fence to flop over the new fire pit.

Bryce comes in, flushed with victory. “I found an old gate we can use. Guess I'll spray it off with the hose.”

“Thanks,” Jesse says. “The heat'll sterilize it, I guess.” He works a little more, adding to the pile of thin, flexible bones on the side of the cutting board. “Contamination's a bad deal, man. It can fuck up just about anything. Beer, for sure.”

“Meth, too, I bet.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He'd once let slip that he was from Albuquerque and also admitted to cooking; Rust has a good idea who he is and what he's running from, but Jesse rebuffs the inquiries every time he tries. “So cod season starts January first. You can wrap up the Christmas festivities you're not having and we'll ship out. I'm not gonna quit hassling you till you say yes.”

Rust says nothing, just sucks on the bottle and watches him lay paper-thin lemon slices down the center and close the coral halves of the fish like a book. His hands rub the silver skin down with olive oil, and the way his fingers push dill sprigs into the pink slit makes Rust's face warm because it looks downright sexual.

Where the fuck is this even coming from?

“Think I might go walk around a little," he says. "See the sights, front-load at the bar, maybe."

"Do whatever you want, man. You know where I live."

Rust heads for the Ptarmigan because he liked it yesterday. It was the perfect mix of dark and dirty, with free peanuts and no Everclear in sight. He decides that regular beer won't cut it after Jesse's homebrew and goes back to Jameson, which melts so smooth in his mouth he feels like a Shakespearean prince who's been forced into disguise and allowed to be his true self again.

The bartender who treated him like nothing special yesterday regards him with new curiosity, and serves him twice before saying, “You should get a haircut, too.”

Rust doesn't answer and notices an uptick in her barwork pivots. Maggie did the same thing the day he mowed their lawn, pirouetting unnecessarily around the kitchen to show off her legs. Maybe it's unconscious, but to him it's always said, _Look at me, look at me. Just look what could be wrapped around you._ He hates it. And loves it.

“You got a name?” he asks somewhere between drinks three and five, and instantly un-hears that it matches his mother's. She claims to like his accent and he notices she has one, too. _You tock funny,_ she says, and he pulls his drawl out like county fair taffy on hooks and drinks himself to a place he considers The Shelf: a place of fuzzy buzz-drunk where he's not thinking about the torn map edges of mankind and he's not irritating anyone. It's the best place he ever is anymore, and he believes this woman recognizes it and appreciates it somehow.

She seems disappointed when he drops a fifty on the bar and walks out without a word.

It's not even in his hands, he decides.

If it's open, he'll do it.

The barbershop's next to the fudge shop that sells fudge and crap nobody needs, and it's open.

The inside's just as yellowed as the glass casing of the striped pole out front and the barber might be older than Rust's Kodiak landlady, shooting the shit with a friend who spins lazy circles in the other chair. They rant about laissez-faire capitalism as the silver snips click and Rust's old graying mess falls down.

“Head down, young man.” A hot towel's horseshoed around the back of his neck. A minute later he shivers at the glide of a straight razor on his skin, followed by the sting and slap of oakmoss and orange. The tension of it's got him so hard he sits and listens to the Libertarian drivel until his dick isn't the fourth person in the room.

He goes back to the Ptarmigan and waits. The haircut isn't acknowledged, but the pours get deeper and she quits taking his money.

At 1:00 am she's talking to someone else but slides him a pint glass of cold water.

At 2:05, she locks up and takes him home, and it's like an irresistible tickle in his ear when she says, “No one can know about this.”

They don't know each other well enough to kiss much and she lays him down and rides him backwards, lowering down to her elbows so he can see where she's stretched, where they're the same color. Her hips drag deep, digging commas on him and blood rushes through his head so fast he has to think to breathe. The dimples over her sacroiliac joints are perfect divots for his thumbs. There's no reason to give this up. Why'd he ever give this up?

_She's a screamer._

It feels like he's being combed through with coke and hot mint; the condom must be broken because it shouldn't feel this good. “Hey.” His fingertips dip into the softness of her waist. “Hey, stop.”

She looks over her shoulder. “You want something different?”

“No.” He pushes her till she slides off, but he was wrong; everything's sticky but intact.

She gasps when he yanks her back on, and when he finally comes it's like he dies a little. He doesn't mean to be so loud or squeeze her so hard, but when she swings off of him there's a Tesla coil electricity in her eyes, like she's proud she can do that to a person.

“You liked that, huh?” she says between drags of a shared cigarette. “Men are visual. I read that in a magazine.”

“Well three cheers for that magazine.”

“There's a place in Lakes that has mirrors on the ceiling.”

He can't help smiling. “When's your next day off?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Wanna go?”

“Yeah.” She rolls up to sit and pulls a filmy yellow robe off the floor. “I'm gonna go watch TV,” she says, and stands up and ties it shut. “You don't have to stay.”

“'Zata hint?”

“No, I'm just saying.”

“Okay then. Guess I'll go.”

She doesn't give him much attention when he leaves and he has absolutely no problem with that.

Walking back to Jesse's with a solitary smoke's the best he's felt in months, maybe years, and there's a light and energy up ahead, punctuated with quiet laughter and voices. The firepit-turned-bonfire out back's attracted about thirty people, and he slips into the house unnoticed and tucks into the futon and sleeps so hard he doesn't even think to look for Dora.

*

An informal card game's happening around the table in the morning. Jesse shovels in Corn Pops with his free hand like a kid and almost loses a mouthful when he sees Rust. “Whoa. You look so weird right now. What's with the makeover?”

“Dunno. Just felt like doin' it.”

“Bullshit. You did it for pussy,” Chad says. “Though truth be told, I'd clean myself up too if I had any hope it'd pay off that fast.”

“What?” Jesse asks. “So it, like, paid off?”

“I got no idea what y'all are talking about,” Rust says.

“Dude. You went home with that girl from the Ptarmigan. Half the town knows.”

“Huh,” Rust shrugs. “Wasn't me.”

“Whatever, man.” Chad turns back to Jesse and their fanned-out cards. “Weird-ass fuckin' thing to lie about.”

*

Jesse turns mysteriously cold. Doesn't talk about cod season or beer, just moves through the same space vaguely hurt. The tension reminds Rust of being around Laurie towards the end, when they knew what was ahead but pretended not to.

A day apart doesn't help like he thinks it might, and when they run into each other outside the Moose Room it seems polite to ask him in for a drink.

“So, like, where you been?” Jesse asks.

“Lakes.”

“Doing what?”

“Nothin'.”

“Huh. That's not what I heard.” Rust ignores this and Jesse works up his nerve. “Do you know anything about this woman?”

Aside from what she likes in bed, not much.

“'Cause I asked around about her and she's _married._ Yeah, and her old man's, like, in the pen. For felony aggravated assault on somebody who did what you're doing now.”

Rust's face rarely gives anything away but Jesse can tell he didn't know.

“What, you think you're, like, eighteen or something? And anyway I thought we weren't doing this anymore. We're done with women, right?”

“Nobody's engaged,” Rust says. “Not her and me. Definitely not you an' me.”

“Dude, no, I'm not gay for you. I...I like...bought into your whole deny-the-programming thing, the oblivion and we're all just protein and shit. And here you are taking field trips to fuck chicks.”

Rush shrugs.

“I'm, like, disillusioned, okay?” Jesse says. “I look up to you or whatever.”

Rust figures the conversation will end if he's a little bit cruel. “Your father figure problem ain't my problem,” he says, blowing smoke. “I'm nobody's dad.”

Jesse puts on a smile that's bitter as hops. “Okay tough guy, I've dealt with way bigger assholes than you. You're, like, a koala bear compared to a guy I know. What's your deal, even? Like, what the fuck did the world ever do to you?”

“Do yourself a favor and shut your mouth, Jesse.”

“Fuck you,” he says, and hardens into a person Rust's never seen before. “You know, maybe Sophia'd still be around if you weren't such an asshole.”

He's never spoken of her up here. Not drunk, not ever.

“Yeah. You fucked up with her, big time,” Jesse says wisely, knowingly. “And it closes in on you at night.”

“How...”

“Because I slept three feet away from you on a boat for three months, that's how. What's that line of crap you like to say? Love's a shroud for the weak? You talk about her in your sleep all the fucking time. Maybe you should, like, cut the esoteric bullshit and just be a decent guy. Like, maybe she'd still be with you if you were.”

A dry block of wood chokes in Rust's throat and he wants to pound Jesse's face until he's dead. “Sophia's my daughter. I lost her in an accident when she was two.”

Jesse winces, and the reflex to hurt him starts deep in Rust's gut and comes out his mouth.

“I know who you are,” he says slowly, savoring the cringe that proves it's true. “Hidin' behind all this kitchen martyr shit like a fuckin' pink cupcake's gonna fix anything. You still see that man's face when he knew he couldn't talk you out of it, don't you? I know all about the blue shit, Jesse. I know exactly who you are.”

He cowers and his voice can barely be heard. “Whatever. I'm sorry about your kid, okay? I...I didn't know.”

Rust drains his glass and stands. “I'm gonna get my stuff out of your house and I'd appreciate you staying here 'cause I don't want to look at you.” He tosses bills on the table and could not give less of a fuck that Jesse's weeping into the cuffs of his sweatshirt. “Have a nice life.”

He's gotten desensitized to how shitty the battered rental house looks from the outside but sees it now. It's a fucking low-rent frat house, sour clothes and dark hair in all the corners...no wonder he can't think here. Dora Lange deserves better than the man he's been this week, an everyman idiot distracted by the candy apple illusion of pleasure. This isn't him. This cannot be him.

Bryce is in the kitchen spreading peanut butter on a round of pilot bread with his finger. “Dude!”

Rust won't miss the monosyllabic communication of these people. Or much else about them. “Don't mind me,” he says. “Just gettin' the fuck out of here.”

“Word travels fast, yo.”

“Word about what?”

“Serious? You don't know? There's some weird-ass mountain man looking for you. Somebody's brother. Gonna kill you or something.”

Rust calmly collects his shit and hopes the brother's looking for someone with a scraggy-ass ponytail.

He keeps his head down on his way out to the Spur Highway and walks backward with a thumb out until an old man in an old Ford takes mercy. “Where you headed?”

“Catchin' the ferry at Homer.”

“Homer to where? Seldovia?”

“Kodiak.”

“I can get you to the terminal but I don't wanna hear your story,” the driver says. “So don't tell me yours and I won't bore you with mine.”

Rust uses the quiet to think about women. Dora Lange. Claire, almost.

Sophia.

It always bothers him to share her because no one who learns of her can imagine her as she really was. They only see the oil-smoke tragedy, not the parian doll looks and the wild streak and her little heart as big as the sky.

He wonders what marrow deep defect in him attracts women like Maggie and the mirror girl. It's as if they know they'll never truly have him, which dovetails nicely with the fact that they never truly want him.

Claire wanted a family and got one, briefly.

Laurie never wanted him, not really. She wanted a project, a problem to solve, and the project of him would be replaced by newer, smaller ones.

Maggie hadn't wanted him, in fact she diminished him to a point that's still upsetting.

This last one didn't want him either.

He's toxic. Of that there's no doubt.

He can't even keep his friends.

*

On the nine hour ferry ride he feels sick and burrows into his own coat and the acrid humidity of whiskey and sweat. He gets a flash of childhood, at school when he was maybe nine or ten. _“Rustin, you can't pick on people like that. Have you noticed when you make others feel bad, it makes you feel bad, too?”_

He honestly hadn't. If anything he got a rush from it, from the initial teacher's scolding all the way up to when he classified Marty Hart as a report-typing parasite. He'd say that shit all over again and worse if he could, to Marty, to Maggie, to everyone.

But something about what he said to Jesse makes him feel bad.

He beats himself up a little for caring, for submitting to his nature enough to crave friendship or sex, but the self-flagellation's just another tangent to distract from his debt.

How many more children have been snuffed out?

How many more women have been broken down, punctured in their softest place and arranged like faceless, empty shells?

*

The autumn proves that his locked room is the devil's workshop, or secular equivalent considering the devil's a plastic Halloween pitchfork and a red-horned headband. He's as wrong as he was last year about a breakthrough after time apart. Dora's arms don't open up and neither does his mind. It's all headaches and a burnt coffee taste in his mouth.

Looking at his files is like trying to slice bread with a brick.

He's lost something, and he considers the deadline for when he needs to get it back by or come up with an alternate plan. Like the one he thought he lacked the constitution for, the one his father took. He considers himself from above, alone between Sophia and pop, as if his very proximity is the cause. As if it's high time he woke up and joined them.

He drinks so hard he's not sure if he's awake or mid-nightmare when he thinks he's down in the hold of the boat, running out of air and pressed under the weight of a thousand dead fish. Above the deck he hears the whimper and howl of Dora Lange crying, and though he can't see her, he hears the pitch of her voice change when she morphs into Claire, another quaking woman he's let down, another woman who's too ruined to speak.

*

He can't do it in January. That's her month.

February...maybe. But that's when daylight stretches a little further and his mood usually improves. The Lange break he wants could come then, if he can ease off on pickling his head long enough to recognize it when it happens.

He's leafing through a calendar and coming to the realization that he can't do it when a loud knock sounds on the door. It's probably for the new tenant at the end of the row so he ignores it, but the banging continues. The murderous brother (whom he's always imagined looking and smelling like DeWall Ledoux) wouldn't have bothered coming this far, so it has to be someone looking for the other guy.

Whoever it is is a persistent fucker.

“Rust. Open the door.”

Well, that's interesting. But no more tempting to open it.

“I came all this way and I'm not gonna stop till you open the door. Just for a minute, man, come on.”

It's Jesse with a box in his arms. He's nervous, blue eyes bright against the backdrop of dull pine and snow. “We don't have to talk or anything. I just wanted you to have this.”

Rust takes the box and knows from its weight what's inside. He sets it down inside and pulls out a bottle. It can't be homebrew because it's professionally labeled, but a closer look shows that it's Idle Hands Eisbock, with their black tattoos twined together.

“You'll love it,” Jesse says. “It's the best thing I've ever made. We did a great job on it.”

Rust can't get over the label. It's perfect. “Your girlfriend do this?”

Jesse reddens and looks away.

“I ain't gonna shit on you for being happy,” he says. “If you are, anyway.”

“Yeah. I dunno.” He swallows hard. “Sometimes, I guess. Anyway, uh, I'll get out of here. It was nice seeing you.”

“No.” Rust pushes the door open a little wider with his foot. “You came all this way. Come in.”

Jesse hesitates. “Okay, but I'm sorry. About the shit I said.”

“I am, too, and I ain't mad at you. I never was.”

Jesse nods and his softness pushes him so close to tears. “Okay.”

“Now get in here, you're letting all the cold fuckin' air in.” Rust nudges him inside and makes a quick disclosure. “Don't flip out about the pictures tacked up in here, there's a good reason for 'em.”

Jesse almost smiles. “Okay,” he says, and the door closes behind them with a soft click.

The beer tastes like toast and toffee and fire, heavy in the middle and a finish that pulls out into a wide, warm glow. There's a whole universe in it, and Rust closes his eyes and floats for a while. Even though its alcohol content is through the roof, beer-wise, he probably couldn't get drunk off it. But it opens him up and makes him talk.

He explains the DB pictures and what he's running from: the other marriage he inadvertently tripped into, the Lange case, and the sickening knowledge that the killing isn't over and he may be the only person on the right side of it who knows or cares.

Jesse listens sympathetically and spills every bean he has, too, from the RV to the roster of women and children who haunt him to the underground cell smeared with his DNA.

“The forepeak hatch. On the boat,” Rust says. “That's why you were so afraid of it.”

“Right. I don't like someone yelling at me period, but if they're overhead and I'm down below I can't handle it, I guess.”

“Makes sense,” Rust says casually, though it's so fucking sad it hurts him to hear it.

“Maybe the DEA'll catch up with me someday, but I've sort of stopped caring,” Jesse says, and traces the beer label's edge with a thumbnail. “I guess I just wanna do good for other people in the time I have left.”

It's a bit of a parallel to what Rust wants, too: to make the cosmic gutter more bearable for those who've been laid the lowest by having loved and lost. To provide answers. Bones, maybe. A story.

Jesse opens another bottle to let it breathe. “I never thought I'd talk about this stuff to anyone,” he says, and Rust nods because feels the same way.

It's easy to talk about because the beer's so good.

It's the best.


End file.
